Skin In The Game


Nassim Nicholas Taleb has the article What do I mean by Skin in the Game? My Own Version.

Skin in the game –as a filter –is the central pillar for the organic functioning of systems, whether humans or natural. Unless consequential decisions are taken by people who pay for the consequences, the world would vulnerable to total systemic collapse. And if you wonder why there is a current riot against a certain class of self-congratulatory “experts”, skin the game will provide a clear answer: the public has viscerally detected that some “educated” but cosmetic experts have no skin in the game and will never learn from their mistakes, whether individually or, more dangerously, collectively.

From his comments on his home page it is not clear to me if “Skin In The Game” is, or is not the title of a book that he has written.

The book was not submitted to any reviewer. There was no U.S. book tour, no promotion, no advance copies, just a single lecture in NYC. Yet it mysteriously opened at #2 on the NYT bestsellers list.

Maybe this is explained in the article Putting Skin in the Game into the Reviewers of Skin in the Game.

(Skin in the Game was embargoed (meaning no copy was sent to reviewers), as the book explains the agency problem of reviewers. Three UK journos got hold of it and hurriedly wrote revenge reviews, perhaps too hurriedly. This note exposing their errors of reading comprehension made them accountable, and led to no further journalist reviewing the book: only end users and specialists. Note that, something I wasn’t seeking, the book still made the top of the bestseller list in both countries, meaning neither nasty attacks (UK) nor silence (US) seems to affect it).

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